One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States

UC-Irvine historian LeVine (Heavy Metal Islam) and Mossberg (Sweden’s embassador to Morocco, 1994–1996) assemble distinguished scholars, diplomats, senior government officials, and international lawyers to lend support to a creative solution to the Israel-Palestine peace process: “establishing one Palestinian state on all of historic Palestine, which would exist simultaneously and on the same land with an Israeli state on all of Eretz Yisrael.” Not least because nothing else has worked, “the idea of resolving the... conflict through a Parallel States structure is new, logically attractive, and without an exact precedent.” In brief chapters, mostly academic in tone, the contributors discuss the potential modes of operation of a dual-sovereignty country, including the implications of a shared economy, establishing a judicial system, and the types of security guarantees that could induce the Israelis to accept such an arrangement. Lund University political scientist Jens Bartelson notes that the idea of national sovereignty has not kept pace with the changing nature of global conflict, and that wars increasingly concern “whether the conflict in question is international or domestic in nature.” Meanwhile, LeVine and UC-Irvine doctoral candidate Liam O’Mara IV argue that religion in the parallel states could go from being a driver of conflict to a unifying force. The essays are necessarily short on specifics, but the idea merits further exploration. Agent: Jill Marr, Sandra Dijkstra Agency. (July)